Grace Dent's TV OD: All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace

Adam Curtis's new documentary series All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace (Mon, 9pm, BBC2) suggests that man is not liberated by computers but actually enslaved. It's a premise that's difficult to refute as I type this column into an overheated laptop with TweetDeck, email and Skype on the same screen bleeping and nagging. Meanwhile, a phone lead penetrates the side of the laptop, charging, syncing, keeping calendars topped up with "shit that must not be forgotten" and receiving text messages advising me that food I told the computer to tell the shop I want to eat is due to arrive. All the emotions I commodify online are first typed into a computer, pinged across to other computers, and updated on a website, where a comment box allows anyone to make themselves feel better/worse by venting on to the internet. My worth is dictated by a league table of how many people clicked the link to me, or Facebooked it. What's that, Curtis? Computers are the boss of us? We don't know what you mean.

For fresh air, I may tootle along to an Apple Store, where I'll feel verily honoured if I'm in a shorter queue to give them my money more quickly for a machine that will sync up with all the applications mentioned above. When my family – real people no less, not avatars – complained that work stopped me seeing them, I solved the problem with computers and Wi-Fi routers. Now they're all on the network and part of "the future" and, ergo, as "happy" as I am. And look at me, I'm so happy. Twitter alone has given me retinal migraine issues, RSI and cajoled me into believing I am a free-thinking revolutionary fanning flames of liberty in Iran, Libya and Syria, when in fact I'm just a woman in pyjamas, hugging an Intel Pentium processor, waiting for Ocado to fetch more olives. Up the revolution … oooh, have these got pimentos in them? Yum, yum, slurp.

Episode one of this brilliant series questions – among other things – the sanity of us placing computers in charge of global financial stability. It examines the idea of computers creating a collective morality and takes an illuminating look at 50s Russian-American philosopher Ayn Rand and her theories of objectivism. Roughly speaking, Rand implored man to eschew the edicts of others, reject altruism and embrace a morality of self-interest (or "please your bloody self"). Rand's surviving friends are interviewed reminiscing about their merry Saturday night thinkers' group, The Collective; except this is a Curtis documentary, so it's spliced with long scenes of Monica Lewinsky picking up dry-cleaning, Hammer horror sound effects, and footage of Loren Carpenter's Pong experiment. Here, 5,000 individuals were left in a massive shed in front of a huge screen to ascertain whether they could work out why they were there and how to play a videogame. Carpenter's guinea pigs were gleeful when they connected as a "subconscious consensus", whooping with joy as their individual green and red bats moved the Pong paddle. They were all in this together. It made them feel great. Or did it? Episode one has no neat solutions to our growing submission to machines but is thoroughly worth the effort. Perhaps set your Sky+ or PVR remotely via your phone for it. Then series link it so it's neatly stacked up for when you've tackled all the other TV that the collective "reckon" has told you to watch. Or perhaps give it a miss. Ignore everything, suit yourself. Because you're the boss, after all, aren't you?